This blog describes Metatime in the Posthuman experience, drawn from Sir Isaac Newton's secret work on the future end of times, a tract in which he described Histories of Things to Come. His hidden papers on the occult were auctioned to two private buyers in 1936 at Sotheby's, but were not available for public research until the 1990s.

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Caption for the above photo: Once upon a time in a Soviet Union far, far away, Russia set out to build the world's largest particle accelerator under a small town called Protvino. Already plagued by setbacks, the work on the accelerator ceased after the fall of the Soviet Union and it's been abandoned since.

Dvice is reporting on a set of incredible Urbex photos of an abandoned Soviet particle accelerator. It's amazing to see one of the foremost symbols of futuristic science of our current era reduced to an Urbex ruin. Will this be how future peoples see the wreckage of our research and our civilization? All photo sources are from the first cited sites for the image above. Also below is an excerpt from an article about an accident that took place at this site, in which a scientist was exposed to the accelerator while it was in full operation. This is the only such case in human history.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

NASA Tribute to Discovery with the insignia of all her missions. Image Source: Wiki.

A spacecraft that has been vitally important to the history of human exploration is about to be retired. Up to the last minute, it wasn't clear if the Space ShuttleDiscovery would make her launch today. First flown in 1984, this will be her 39th and final mission. The Shuttle retires amid discussion that NASA's space program is giving way to private space firms, such as Elon Musk'sSpaceX. According to The Space Review, other companies in the running for significant commercial participation in the American space program are Boeing, Orbital Sciences Corporation, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and United Launch Alliance (ULA).

I09 recently carried some amazing time lapse videos of Chilean telescopes watching the night skies; the site is "the largest astronomical project in human history." I've rarely seen star-gazing videos that make our place in the Milky Way Galaxy so clear. See the videos below the jump.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Popsci is reporting that Google is developing an Internet system that can be used between spacecraft (Hat tip: @swadeshine). Popsci is picking up on an original interview with Google’s 'Chief Internet Evangelist,' Vint Cerf at Network World about the development of an extraterrestrial Internet:

Google wants to install “InterPlanetary internet protocols” (IP IP?) on spacecraft, using them as an interwoven network of new space-based communication nodes. ... Google realized as far back as 1998 that space-based Internet has problems that don’t face the traditional Internet design — speed-of-light communications are instant on Earth, but at interplanetary distances, that’s slow, and can cause problems. An interplantary network could help overcome these problems.

The approach uses delay-tolerant networking, or Bundle Protocol, as distinct from Internet Protocol. The International Space Station uses Bundle Protocol, which defines blocks of data as a bundle, each of which contains enough information to avoid processing interruptions even in a delay.

This year, Google wants to standardize the interplanetary protocols and make them available to all the space-faring countries. ... “Potentially every spacecraft launched from that time on will be interwoven from a communications point of view. But perhaps more important, when the spacecraft have finished their primary missions, if they are still functionally operable — they have power, computer, communications — they can become nodes in an interplanetary backbone.”

The concept of Interplanetary Internet is about a year old. The Website of the Delay-Tolerant Networking Research Group (DTNRG), an open research group on this question, is here.

Monday, February 21, 2011

There's a tongue-in-cheek report at Red Gage (here) that Google is experimenting with artificial intelligence technology to help Gmail users field the avalanche of messages in their inboxes with auto-responses (Hat Tip: @Altaire). This is the kind of funny little Internet story people talk about over the water cooler at work. But it has huge implications.

About Me

Welcome to my blog, dedicated to the aporia, anomie, mysteries, and nervous tensions of the turn of the Millennium. I'm a writer and academic, trained in the field of history. These are my histories of things that define the spirit of our times. This blog also goes beyond historians' visions of the past, and examines how metatime and time are perceived in other media and disciplines, between generations, and in high and pop culture.